The Nature Conservancy’s Nature Stories podcast features a bike-mic collage, produced by Emily Botein, of my two-wheeled self-propelled roadtrips. From Stories from the Heart of the Land, “Biking the Back Roads” (10:05 mp3):
As the recent victim of a bike theft, this story in today’s Washington Post was particularly poignant:
As Web Fuels Bike Thefts, Victims Turn Vigilantes
Favourite Quote:
“You steal someone’s bike, and God have mercy on you if they ever find you,” he said. “It’s something so insanely personal. People have a more personal connection to their bikes than their iPod.”
and, this admittedly depressing closer:
“He posted to the site startlingly clear photos of a man riding what he said was his bike, and he filed a police report. Police have followed up on his tips to no avail, McKenna said.”
In planning our next bike trip I stumbled upon Wikitravel, “a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide.” E.g., check Route 66 or Santa Fe Trail, nice play-by-play of the route for travelers.
Latest High Country News has a profile on a pocatello graphic designer who also makes bikes to give away — when he’s not teaching folks how to fix their own bikes… Seems to be currying a sort of low-key activist stance on fighting urban sprawl.
here’s the web teaser.
HV audio was all over pubradio last weekend. Jake Warga searched Ethiopia for “The Perfect Photo” on All Things Considered. On This American Life Scott Carrier, in Salt Lake City, watched “The Lake Effect” form as SLC mayor Rocky Anderson debated FOX New’s Sean Hannity.
I finished a bike “Trek through Yellowstone, Part 2” for Weekend America. “Part 1” was the weekend america before, as was Scott C’s “Steelhead Fishing” trip. And a final grand total of 384 stations broadcast our “For the Fallen” special.
Took the new all-in-one HHB Flash Mic/Recorder (US$1K street) for a literal spin. Wrapped it in a Rycote full-ball wind-sock (that I use for my Shure VP-88), stuffed it inside the chest pocket of a shell-jacket (in above mic it’s that tribble sticking outta my torso), then pedaled about 30-miles, recording and babbling into it much of the way.
The HHB is a good-sounding microphone with a high-quality digital recorder built right into the mic tube. It’s a mono omni dynamic mic. I rarely use dynamics cuz they just don’t sound as good as condensers (which have wider frequency response and greater signal level = better basses and highs = crispness and presence). But for a dynamic the HHB sounds pert-dern decent. Here’s a mic-ing-while-biking clip:
You can hear it’s pretty good with handling and wind-noise (at least w/ sock on). You can see the mic-to-mouth distance in above pic and hear it’s picking up my voice and road sounds rather well.
Ease-of-use is where this thing really shines. It’s gotta 1GB flash memory card (non-removable) built in, which gives you 3+ hours of recordings (at 44.1KHz, 16bit mono .wav). If it’s on it’s in record-monitor mode. One-button starts the recording, and there’s a pre-record buffer that writes-to-disk the up-to-10sec. of audio before you hit record.
Batteries (2 AAs), which weren’t fresh when I statrted, lasted 4+hours. The headphone amp powered my Etymonic buds well — no trouble monitoring. The thing is really light-weight, but the mic housing and buttons feel rugged. The level meter screen is small but usable. The LCD display is quite readable, even in fairly strong outdoor-light, with usable indicaters of mic-lvel and battery-life. The bottom button/dial on the bottom turns it on and controls all the levels and myriad menu commands, which is a bit tedious; but if you set most everything before you go out it isn’t a prob. There’s a mini-USB jack (digi-camera style) on the bottom for uploading your soundfiles via computer. Didn’t use the filters (high & lo pass) or auto-level controls, so don’t know nada about how they perform.
In sum, this thing performed admirably in this difficult-to-record situation. So considering the parameters: an all-in-one light, rugged mic/recorder that sounds good, is simple to use, stores lotsa audio , and runs a long time on a set of batteries, HHB has done a really nice job. But as with all HHB products, you pay for their high-quality and innovation: the HHB Flash Mic’s about US$1K (street).
Cred: Borrowed the mic from Atlantic Public Media. Recording was for the new series Stories from the Heart of the Land. Thanks to Emily Botein for clip selection.